Jared Porter: Lions remain hot on home diamond

Mar. 9—The home cooking over at Warren Turner Field is apparently pretty dang good.

For those unaware, the Missouri Southern baseball team is in the midst of an impressive streak on its home diamond.

How impressive?

Well, the Lions haven't been defeated at Warren Turner in 682 days.

That's right: 682.

Perhaps COVID-19 has a bit to do with the length of the streak because more than half of last year's college baseball season was wiped out. But the fact that Southern has claimed wins in 21 consecutive home games is impressive nonetheless.

In fact, it's the longest home win streak MSSU has put together since the mid-1990s, when it won 28 consecutive home games in the 1994 and '95 seasons. Interestingly enough, current Southern head coach Bryce Darnell was a player for the program during that previous streak.

In the current campaign, the fifth-ranked Lions have gone 6-0 at home while outscoring opponents by an average of 4 1/2 runs per game. It's helped catapult them to one of the best starts in program history, as they're now 11-1 with a run differential of plus-39.

And sure, it helps that MSSU basically has the same cast of players it featured last season, when it went 14-0 on its home field.

A formidable pitching staff featuring guys like Will Bausinger, Zach Parish and Zac Shoemaker presents a daunting task for any lineup.

Combine that with the offensive firepower the Lions have in guys such as Troy Gagan, Joe Kinder, Henry Kusiak and others, and you understand why MSSU is the fifth-ranked team in all of NCAA Division II baseball right now.

Southern's most recent home loss? You have to go all the way back to April 27, 2019, when Pittsburg State picked up a 9-4 win over the Lions in their last home series of the season. MSSU, however, earned an 8-4 win over the Gorillas the very next day to officially begin the streak we're talking about nearly two years later.

The Lions' next competition won't take place at Warren Turner Field — for that, we have to wait for March 19, when it opens a five-game series with Central Oklahoma.

But this weekend's series with Missouri Western in St. Joseph does come at a significant time because it will mark the one-year anniversary of the MIAA's cancellation of its 2020 spring sports seasons.

Just to be clear, I never said it was a happy anniversary.

But perhaps one silver lining to it is understanding just how far we've come since the sports world went dark last spring. We're starting to get that sense of normalcy back. For MSSU, a full basketball season was completed with minimal hiccups. Sports such as baseball, softball, volleyball and track and field are in full swing. Heck, Southern even announced on Monday that its football program will play an exhibition game in less than two weeks.

And least importantly, sports reporters like me are back to ranting about trivial things like home winning streaks.

I, for one, am interested to see just how far this streak at Warren Turner Field can go.

Or maybe I'm just excited that college baseball is back.

Jared Porter is a sports reporter for The Joplin Globe. His email is jporter@joplinglobe.com. He's on Twitter at @JaredRyanPorter.